THEATER PREVIEW: 'Flashdance' moves from screen to stage

Even though Sydney Morton was just a little girl when she first watched Jennifer Beals gyrate around in leg warmers to the song “Maniac” in the iconic 1983 film “Flashdance,” she identified with the character.

Even though Sydney Morton was just a little girl when she first watched Jennifer Beals gyrate around in leg warmers to the song “Maniac” in the iconic 1983 film “Flashdance,” she identified with the character.

Morton said her dreams of becoming a dancer made the film resonate with her, so much so that it was in the “regular Blockbuster rotation” at her house. “I felt like she was the grown-up version of me,” said Morton, who hails from Cincinnati and is a dead-ringer for Beals.

No longer an aspiring dancer, Morton has several Broadway credits under her belt, and appeared in NBC’s TV adaptation of “The Sound of Music.” But playing the lead of Alex Owens, the Pittsburgh steelworker by day and exotic dancer by night who aims to become a professional dancer, in the stage musical “Flashdance” has been like “coming full circle,” she said.

“It’s kind of like destiny. It’s pretty awesome,” said Morton, who earned her degree in musical theater from the University of Michigan.

The show stays faithful to the movie while fleshing out some of the characters, according to Tom Hedley, who wrote both the screenplay for the movie and the book for the musical.

One of his goals in developing the stage version was to avoid the “camp” of the ‘80s in the same over-the-top way as a “Rock of Ages” or a “Xanadu” have. Rather than parody his original work, Hedley strove to update. Though there is still a generous helping of big hair, chunky sweaters and high-energy music, the main character is trying for a modern dance audition rather than a ballet school.

Hedley said the production that hits Boston’s Citi Emerson Colonial Theatre on March 11 manifests his original vision for “Flashdance,” parts of which were sacrificed for the screen.

“I was very conscious of trying to write a musical at the time when nobody wanted musicals,” he said.

Still, he would not go back and change the film, which has become an icon of ‘80s pop culture.

“When I coined the phrase flash dance, I had this idea of a whole style,” he said. “The idea was this instant where music, fashion and dance all come together and I think we really accomplished that.”